Harris has released her economic plan, full of good and bad proposals.

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Vice President Kamala Harris is out with her economic plan “to bring down costs for American families.” There’s already a lot of buzz about her proposals to go after corporate “price gouging,” cut taxes for families with kids and offer $25,000 in aid to first-time home buyers. And those are just a few of the ideas.

I discussed the good, the bad and the big picture with my fellow columnists Eduardo Porter and Megan McArdle.

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Heather Long: What’s your biggest takeaway from the plan? What is your early read on “Kamalanomics,” and how is it different from Bidenomics?

Eduardo Porter: Kamalanomics seems to be much more focused on prices than Bidenomics, which put a lot more emphasis on creating manufacturing jobs. But a similar populism rings through.

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Megan McArdle: President Joe Biden promised, improbably, to bring back loads of manufacturing jobs. Harris is promising, even more improbably, to simply command things to be other than what they are. I have been cringing watching intelligent commentators who know better pretend that maybe there’s something to this price-gouging plan. Like, who can really say whether inflation is caused by an excess of money sloshing around the system, or by corporate greed? Gotta hear both sides!

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Heather: Okay, are there any parts of the overall plan that you like? It does include more than the price-gouging part.

Eduardo: Well, the expanded child tax credit sounds like a good idea! Harris is leaning heavily on being “popular.” We should remember that this is a political document, not an economic blueprint. Hopefully, the crazier bits will fall by the wayside over the coming months.

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Megan: I think that is a really, really dangerous strategy.

Heather: That’s an interesting question — is this a winning economic platform? Some are arguing that most of these policies won’t be enacted, but this is good messaging to beat Donald Trump. Do you buy that?

Megan: The problem is, if you get elected promising to lower prices by punishing price gougers, voters will want you to actually do it. Ditto the subsidies for first-time home buyers.

Eduardo: In this sense, it is amazing how Trump moved the Overton window. He is setting the terms for the economic policy conversation.

Heather: The price-gouging part of the plan is an especially interesting example. Clearly there’s a lot of hate about high prices in America. And many do blame companies for that. Harris’s plan is pretty nebulous on it. What would it really take to trigger federal action to go after a grocery chain?

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Megan: I’m sure Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan would be happy to have a go.

Eduardo: Maybe Harris doesn’t have to go after grocery stores. An investigation into collusion by meatpackers or poultry producers might do the trick. But that could be just a standard antitrust move, subject to all the regular constraints.

Heather: I think Eduardo is likely right that Harris really means to target collusion. But the FTC already has that power. So it’s not so much a new idea here, but a signal it will be more widely enforced and tried.

Megan: The Biden administration has been pushing this line since the avian flu epidemic raised the price of eggs. It failed, both politically and economically. Concentration in the meatpacking business is high for certain products, but arguably that holds down consumer prices, as massive processors are able to squeeze suppliers. If you broke up Tyson and Perdue, chicken farmers might get a little more breathing room, but chicken prices would rise.

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Heather: Let’s talk about housing. There’s a lot of fear among young Americans that they will never be able to buy a home. The very first part of the plan released Friday is housing. Do we think any of it makes sense? Megan, I know you were criticizing the idea of a $25,000 credit or aid for first-time home buyers. Something similar was in place in the early 2010s, and it did boost demand (back when we had way too many homes for sale!).

Megan: Yes, but I was shopping for a house then, and my experience was that bidding wars to buy a house before the credit expired transferred pretty much all the value — and then some — to existing homeowners, a group that doesn’t really need Harris’s help.

Heather: Right. We clearly need more supply of homes right now. But I think people are missing that Harris’s plan is more than just the $25,000 credit idea. There are also some smart ideas here on tax credits/incentives to encourage builders to build smaller homes for first-time buyers. And this ambitious goal of 3 million new homes in the next four years seems a good........

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